Isabella Bird - a really tough old bird ?

by fulltimestudent 1 Replies latest social current

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  fulltimestudent

  Isabella was one of those indomitable British women, perhaps channeling Queen Victoria who roamed the world during the relatively short British ascendency. My interest in her is because of her journeys through Australia (didn't think much of OZ), HawaiCentral Asia, Japan, Korea and China, (and other places) and her valuable eye-witness accounts of her journeys.

  In 1896, at the age of 64, she set off on a journey of exploration of the Yangzi River and the border regions of Sichuan province and Tibet. And its her impressions of China, at the end of the 19th C, that I want to share.

  You'll find the Wikipedia entry of her interesting.

  Here's the lady herself.

  

  In China, she took care (unlike many other westerners) to take local attitudes into account and often dressed in Chinese style. Here she is in Manchu clothing.

  

  Interuption: I'll have to post more later
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  Hortensia

  I read her biography a while ago, and her narratives of her trips. Have you read about the trip she took in Colorado? Estes Park. Some amazing stuff in that story. She was an indomitable old Bird! I like her story, so impressive, and others of a similar nature like Freya Stark, Gertrude Bell, Marianne Kingsley and one of my favorites: Alexandra David-Neal. Thanks for starting this topic, I love reading these books. Have you read The Gobi Desert, by Mildred Cable and Francesca French? The fact that they were missionaries doesn't make the story any less interesting.

  I had a fantasy, in my China traveling days, of traveling from Xian by train as far as it goes toward Pakistan, so I could see the places Cable and French saw. Then take a bus or something to Pakistan to travel on the Karakorum highway. Unfortunately pretty much for my most adult life, Pakistan has been a little too dangerous, and then the time passed and I never got my trip.